


These Roots Come Caving In

by ofrainyskiesandviolets



Category: Derry Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Depression, Emotional Abuse (parental), Hurt/Comfort, James needs a hug, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of James being Bisexual, Suicide Attempt, i took some liberties bc i always explore mental illness, takes place after the second season finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofrainyskiesandviolets/pseuds/ofrainyskiesandviolets
Summary: James has decided to stay in Derry. He has a family now, people who love him, a home. Everyone sort of expects this to be the point where things naturally look up, James included. Regardless of any positive developments, the pieces of his life always seem to find a way to fall apart. He always finds a way to fall apart. He thinks he probably should have realized that by now.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), lots of friend and family interactions though
Comments: 43
Kudos: 137





	1. Act I

**Author's Note:**

> Just a warning that this is going to be a pretty dark story, focusing on mental illness and the effects of Kathy's behavior and James' life in London.  
> I try not to be too graphic with anything, but I want to be real too. I struggle with mental illness (primarily anxiety and OCD, but depression too) and I tend to be drawn towards those topics in my writings. Obviously there's no canon mental illness in the show, which is what I meant in the tags when I said I took "creative liberties."  
> Apologies for any typos or mistakes I may have overlooked.  
> **more personal notes are at the end**

The first few days following his decision to stay in Derry, James feels like there’s a weight lifted off of his shoulders. He’s finally found a home, was finally able to break out from his mother’s chains. Logically, this really should’ve been the moment where everything began looking up and stayed that way. He hadn’t felt that happy in years, nowhere near as happy as when all the girls were hugging him and celebrating his return. He’d never felt so loved.

They had all gone down to Erin’s house, and when Ma Mary returned, Erin filled her in and she’d made food for them and Da Gerry told him that he was glad he’d be sticking around. It had felt almost like a celebration, like a birthday party, but better. Things were going to go well for him, he could feel it. 

Somewhere along the line, however, for some unknown reason, everything starts to go to shit again, even worse than before. He isn’t sure where to pin the beginning of the demise of that happy feeling. Maybe it begins the night he wakes up and realizes how little his mum had seemed to care about him staying behind. She had dropped him at Deirdre’s and left him to walk into the celebration, barely acknowledging his profuse apologies. Maybe it begins when the girls innocently tell an inside joke he doesn’t understand, and he becomes aware that there will always be a distance between him and them, a gap where time in Derry went along unaware of his existence. All of these ideas seem a little too simple though, too easy to hold onto and blame. Maybe he should’ve been aware this was going to happen. It always seems to eventually. 

For all the euphoria of that day where peace was solidified in his new home, despite all the love and attention, he still wakes up and feels alone (which just makes him feel worse––guilty and morose, because why was nothing ever enough for him? Once his mother had told him he needed to stop looking for problems where there weren’t any). His mother hasn’t spoken more than a few sentences to him since that day. Paul had written him a letter months ago and promised to call and only had once. He hadn’t spoken to his old friends in months. He wishes he could be content with solely the Derry-life, leaving London and its people behind, but the fact still stands that these are people he cares about. Do they still care about him? Did they ever? And more importantly, would he ever be able to stop caring? 

James is overcome by the feeling that he’d like to crawl out of his skin, curl up somewhere dark and empty. Somewhere he would be truly alone, so maybe when he comes back he won’t find himself longing for more than he needs, more than he deserves. Maybe he’d return from his vacant sabbatical and his Auntie Deirdre would tell him it was nice to have him back and that the girls were waiting for him in Michelle’s room. The idea sounds nice.

Even before, when he’d still been wishing to return to London, on the days that he’d felt like this, eventually being with the girls would draw him out of it enough that he could shed all that and leave it behind for a little. They’d help without even realizing he needed helping in the first place. Now, sitting there waiting for them to fix him makes him feel like a fraud. Like he’ll never be able to deliver what his friends deserve from him, which leads to the idea that it’s pointless for him to hang around them at all. James wishes one of them would notice that he wasn’t feeling right, show him some rare tenderness and ask him how he is, assure him that it’s okay to wish for his mum and stepdad and old friends to reach out to him. When they don’t, he wants to be angry, but he figures it’s just the same. It isn’t their job to help him. They aren’t his keepers. Time and time again, James has to get jolted back to reality, reminded that he’s the only person who’s ever going to stay in his life forever. He wishes he could find comfort in the idea.

* * *

Michelle barrels into his room one day while he’s doing homework on the floor. She leaps onto his bed and peers over his shoulder, scoffing at the maths sitting in his lap on a Friday afternoon. It makes James smile. He loves Michelle, and that was something he used to never think he would honestly be able to say.

“Oi, dickhead, what is going on with you? You’ve been even more boring than normal lately.” Guilt floods his system. He loathes the idea that he’s bringing the girls down with him. 

“Oh. Sorry.” He wishes he had more to say, but words were never his strong suit. His old therapist back in London had said that he just thinks about it too much, but James sees it as another shortcoming he won’t be able to thwart. Sometimes he missed his therapist––he was one of the only people James felt fully comfortable speaking to. How sad was that? The man was paid to care about him and James was sitting here missing their chats! It’d be laughable if it didn’t make him feel so pathetic. 

“Yeah, well, whatever. Are you even ready, ballache? We’re supposed to be meeting at Erin’s house, remember?” She leans in pointedly, stressing the question at the end, ready to rib him if he says he didn’t. James thinks it’d probably be good to go out, but he’s been particularly anxious all day and he didn’t think the girls would be pleased to have him spewing his unfounded nerves all over their sleepover, and even if it made him a wuss, he definitely didn’t think he could handle Erin’s Granda Joe grilling Gerry for letting a boy spend the night right now. 

“Well yeah, but… I think I might sit this one out… if that’s okay.” He hates how shaky his voice sounds, but the idea of hurting his friends’ feeling terrifies him. He never was one for confrontation. 

“What?” Michelle’s brash manner of speech almost makes him flinch. “Why?” She almost sounds a bit concerned. 

“It’s just… been a long day. I probably wouldn’t be much fun to have around anyway,” James says, taps his pencil against his textbook and stares at it like he’s ruminating on the correct way to solve the function. He can feel Michelle staring him down. Pressed against his back, he can feel the bed shift as she pulls herself up. 

“Alright. I hope you’re not gonna stay this feckin’ lame. You’re actin’ like Jenny Joyce.” James laughs a little bit at that, it’s innocent enough that it doesn’t hurt his feelings (at least he’s not at that point yet where something like that would shatter him). 

Michelle leaves, and Deirdre and Martin are both working night shifts, having left just a little before his cousin. James is all alone in the house, and he finds a mix of both relief and terror flooding his system. He’s happy that he’s free from prying eyes and the potential of being judged if he were to break down, but absolutely petrified at the idea of having time alone to think clearly. The good thing about Derry was that the people had a bustling energy about them that rivaled even London’s, and often James found everyone speaking and moving too quickly for him to catch his breath, let alone to ruminate in his anxieties.

It’s still fairly early in the afternoon, just a quarter to five, yet he’s absolutely knackered. Abandoning his homework to the floor, he crawls into his bed and curls up. It creaks underneath the added weight, and James stares out the window into the side of the house next door. It’s a pretty pitiful view, but he traces the cracks in the bricks with his eyes until eventually he’s able to fall asleep. 

James wakes up an hour and a half later, and the sun is low in the sky, his entire room cast in a deep orange haze and painted with long shadows. All the lights in the house are still off, and it feels ominous as he makes his way downstairs. He’s not that hungry, really, but he knows he should eat something. Even though he hasn’t spoken to Paul in some time, the idea of him back when they were still a family, being worried about James’ eating habits, is enough to motivate him to at least make a sandwich. He eats in silence at the kitchen table, doesn’t even turn on the telly. The whole thing reminds him of sitting by himself in the flat in the days in between his parents’ divorce and coming to Derry, when his mum spent most of her time working or at her friends’ houses, only coming in when he was about to go to bed and leaving pretty soon after he got up. It feels weird to be back in that spot.

The house suddenly becomes entirely overwhelming, and James ventures out into the town to take a walk simply to get away from the empty husk of the Mallon home. Somewhere along the line, his footsteps and the fairly quiet evening air become comforting enough that he zones out, finally able to shut everything out for a moment and breathe. Unfortunately, his problems externalize themselves in the form of three Irish teenagers appearing in front of him who are: A. much bigger and buffer than him, and B. glaring at him with their arms crossed over their chests.

“You’re the English fella, right? The Mallons’ little tag-along?” one of them asks, the one on the left with the short, cropped brown hair and menacing brown eyes. James swallows a knot in his throat and gives a short nod, hoping that maybe if they don’t hear his accent he’ll be able to stave their anger. He tries to step around them, but the blonde on the right holds his arm out and stops him.

“Where do you think you’re going? We’re just having a friendly chat, right fellas?” The “friendly chat” takes a quick, but predictable dark turn as James finds himself being wrestled to the ground and, for lack of a better term, getting the shit beaten out of him (the Troubles may be winding to an end, but James would be foolish to think that everyone would suddenly accept him being English). His resolve to fight back leaves him as soon as his cheek slams against the rough cobblestone, and he’s eerily devoid of emotion as the boys kick him and punch him. They don’t leave him be until his jacket is torn up and he’s quite literally spitting blood up. Luckily he only bit his tongue, but the boys still find the gruesome image fitting enough to finally walk away, laughing and hollering as they go. 

James begins to journey back to his aunt and uncle’s house, but he doesn’t get very far, stumbling over to the curb and sitting there, trying to power through the dizziness and pain washing over him in waves. The biggest rip in his clothes is on his shoulder, breaking through all his winter layers, and the cold bites his exposed, raw skin. A chill pours over him, and he thinks he probably could’ve done more to stop them than he had. He isn’t sure why he gave up the defense that easily, and it almost scares him that he let them beat him so thoroughly. 

The sun is completely down by the time something pulls him out of his musings—that something is the girls happening to wander up from the town, likely having stopped at Fionnula’s, and Clare noticing him sitting there, holding his sleeve to his bleeding nose. 

“Jesus, James, what happened to you?!” She screeches, which naturally draws the attention of all the girls, who speed over to him and fuss over him. It should probably feel nice to have them care about him, but James just feels bad for ruining their night. He gives some story about tripping, and Michelle immediately calls him out.

“That’s a piss-poor explanation, ballache. It was some of the lads from the Catholic school, wasn’t it?” His cousin’s nose for sniffing out bullshit is remarkable. Suddenly, he feels very naked and ashamed in front of his friends. Exposed. Unable to answer, he just gives a clipped nod; his chin is wobbling, which makes him feel like a proper dick. “Right, who were they?” James just shrugs. He didn’t exactly have a chance to exchange information. 

“Christ, James, did you do anything to stop them?” Erin’s voice is concerned, and she hands him one of their spare napkins from the chippy to wipe up some of the blood on his face. His nose has finally stopped dripping, but it’s all the same to him—his jacket is destroyed anyway. Eventually, the blonde stops waiting for an answer, and she continues, “Right, well, we’ll take you back to my house and my mam will get you fixed up.” James wants to protest, but if he speaks he’ll probably start crying. 

He hauls himself off the curb, and Orla wraps herself around his right arm, leans into him, and the girls start to herd him to the Quinn house. 

Upon arrival, they bring him into the kitchen, where Ma Mary drops the dish she was drying immediately and sits him down at the table, bringing out the first aid kit. The girls all sit around and stare at his swollen, puffy face as she wipes away at the blood and covers his wounds in antiseptic. It stings like a bitch, but James is already so embarrassed that he refuses to let himself cry. Especially not with all the girls watching and Gerry and Joe just in the other room. Once Sarah wanders in and joins the spectators, all the prying eyes finally get to be too much.

“Can you all stop just staring at me?” 

“Well, James, can you blame them? You’ve been through the absolute ringer,” Mary chides, wincing as she wipes at the deep gash on the shoulder that hit the pavement. 

“Aye,” Orla agrees. “Don’t worry though, James, I’m sure your face will grow back.”

“And if it doesn’t, well I suppose it makes you look kind of handsome and rugged. Like that Liam Neeson fella,” Sarah adds. “Once the swelling goes down, it’ll look quite cracker, don’t you think girls?” 

Sarah and Orla are the most eccentric duo he’s ever met in his life, and the typical comfort he finds in all of the oddities and movement of Derry is incredibly overwhelming in this moment, with seven pairs of eyes staring him down and asking him questions and telling him weird things to try to soothe him. Ma Mary, tough as she is, is a mother first, and she seems to pick up on his discomfort immediately, setting down the reddened cotton ball in her hand and half-turning to the girls. 

“Right, girls, why don’t you go upstairs and let me finish this up.” When they all start to protest, she sends them a look that silences them all in a mere moment, and they shuffle reluctantly up to Erin’s room. Gerry, half-tuned into all the commotion, makes eye contact with Mary and calls Sarah over to watch some news segment that might interest her. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Quinn. I know they all mean well, but I guess I’m just a little overwhelmed.” James can barely bring himself to raise his voice above a whisper. The tears stinging in the back of his eyes make him feel ashamed, but she just smiles and unwraps a plaster. James looks down at the set-up on the kitchen table and is alarmed as he finally processes the amount of blood on the cotton balls and washcloth she’d used to clean him up. 

Mary’s delicacy in pressing the plasters over the deepest sections of his scraped up skin is so tender and motherly that it does make him cry. Even when he was a child, his mother never tended his cuts and scrapes so gently, and he thinks he must be a proper pitiful excuse for a son to have the most gentle care he’s received in his life be from his friend’s mum at fifteen. 

“Ach, James, it’s alright.” Mary pulls him into a hug, and he chokes back a sob as she rubs his back. Christ, he’s so alone. Has been for his entire life. Everything comes crashing down and he feels small and worthless, quivering in Mary’s arms. He really is soft. When she pulls back, she smiles at him warmly. 

“How about a cuppa before you go upstairs and join the girls?” 

“It’s okay, I’ll probably just go back to Auntie Deirdre’s house.” 

“Christ, no. I’ll not be having you wandering around the streets like this, especially not when those brutes who got to you might still be out there, walking about. You’ll stay here, and I’ll put on a kettle, calm your nerves.” Mary bustles into business, throwing away the soiled cotton balls and tossing running the washcloth under the faucet, rinsing out the blood before it sets. 

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Quinn, I can disinfect the table for you.” The kettle clatters, and she doesn’t still her movement around the kitchen. 

“Don’t worry about it, James. I don’t mind. You should wash that blood off your hands though.” He nods, stumbles over to the sink (he’s still a bit lightheaded), and turns the water as hot as it can go. He winces as it pours into his scrapes, but relaxes into its heat. He finds it almost soothing, the way it burns at his skin. 

When Ma Mary hands him his tea, he sits back down in his seat, wipes at his still watering eyes. It’s nice to have the mug in his hands, warm and sturdy, if nothing else. 

“Thank you, Mrs. Quinn.” She’s still bustling around the kitchen, wiping the table down, tossing the washcloth on top of the machine, waiting to be tossed in with a full load (half loads are against what she stands for, after all). 

“It’s no problem, really. I’m a mother, it’s what we do. And if your Kathy wasn’t doing it, then I don’t mind picking up some of the slack.” Mary’s voice is uncharacteristically soft, and James smiles into his cup of tea, all the while the back of his mind suggests that still, maybe he doesn’t deserve it.

* * *

Things hit a particularly low point a little over a week later, when all his nervousness and ruminations finally overload his system and he has his first Derry panic attack that probably won’t fly under the radar. All the past ones he’s had since coming here, he’s been able to stave off his anxiety enough that the shaking and short breaths didn’t start until he was alone in his room. Sure, forcing it back for hours left him dizzy and probably made it worse when he finally let go, but it saved him having to go through the awkward explanations of why this was all happening––most of the time he didn’t even know. 

James wakes up that morning feeling like there’s an incredible weight on his chest, his limbs are heavy and sluggish, and his head is already killing him. Days like this were always terrible. Still, he doesn’t think his family and friends would understand if he explained why he was really feeling so shitty, and the effort it would take to pretend he was sick even outweighs that of dragging himself out of bed and going to school. His mum always said he should fake it ‘til he makes it, a horrible cliché that both James and Paul weren’t so sure applied in this situation, but he thinks it’s worth enough of a shot this time. 

Though they all catch him off guard (they were panic attacks, after all), this one feels like an amalgam of everything he’s been suppressing the past few weeks finally getting the best of him, and when it strikes him on his way to English, he’s physically unable to push it all down until he’s home alone. Even as he rushes into the bathroom (he was finally allowed to use the male faculty one!), he thinks to himself that he’s grateful that it hit him after he had had the one class he has separate from the girls, allowing him to be walking alone when it all catches up to him. 

The faculty bathroom is small, with only a few stalls in it, pressed extremely close to the sinks, and James knocks his shoulder against the door in his haste to get inside of one of the stalls. The bell rings out in the hallways, and the sound jars him even further. He really shouldn’t be worried about this, what with him struggling to breath and all, but missing class and having the girls realize he wasn’t there terrifies him. The added stress builds up and his absolute shit-sack of a body reacts by making him throw up.

James is so endlessly frustrated by all of this, by everything his brain does to him and the anxieties that he has to live with every day. Why couldn’t he just be born normal? He rams his foot into the side of the stall and slides even further onto the floor, clamping the palm of his hand over his mouth, trying to force himself to just calm. the. _fuck_. down. He’s so wrapped up in it all, quivering and wheezing, that when a teacher knocks on the door and asks if he’s alright in there, he audibly gasps, which embarrasses him even more. 

When James tries to answer, it comes out as a muffled, garbled sound, and the teacher opens the door. It’s then James realizes he’d never locked it, and he kicks himself for being so stupid. He forces himself into a more upright position, letting go of his jaw and trying to breathe more evenly. He rubs his hands against his pants and forces himself to flatten his nerves. 

“Sorry, I’m okay… I just––sorry.” He can barely choke the sentence out. He bets no girl in the school would ever be caught dead in this situation, yet of course it had to happen to him, when it's ten times more shameful on account of his gender. The teacher sits down next to him. It’s their French teacher, which makes it even worse, knowing he’s going to have to face him in class later today.

“Hey, mate, no need to explain yourself to me, these things happen. Do you wanna go down to the nurse’s office? Have some time to get sorted?” He sounds genuinely concerned, not amused or judging, but James’ skin still crawls being in his teacher’s presence like this. Still, he nods, and stands and flushes his sick down the toilet, then lets his teacher walk him through the school into the nurse’s office. 

His teacher explains the situation when they get there, then pats him on the shoulder and heads back to his classroom. The nurse hands him some water, and asks him a few questions about it all, first just trying to gauge if he’s sick or running a fever. He feels lucky that the office is empty. As the panic slowly recedes from his system, he’s still shaking and even crying a bit.

“You know what a panic attack is, right love?” The nurse––Miss O’Donnell, her desk tag reads––has a very soft and soothing voice, full of compassion, which makes answering a bit less painstaking. 

“Yeah.” 

“Have you had them before?” Many times. This one had been a bad one, but at least he hadn’t blacked out. That’d happened before. 

“Yeah.”

“Well, do you know what caused it?” He’s never admitted any of this to anyone in Derry before, and he isn’t sure if he should be ashamed or relieved that the first person he’s going to tell is a school nurse. 

“Well, I suppose I… you know… Have a wee anxiety… disorder.” There’s some irony in the fact that he uses the word wee to downplay his condition, having made his frustrations with the misuse of the word very clear, but it’s habit to try to minimize the situation, even if this was certainly not just a small, intermittent issue. Talking about it makes his skin crawl. It always has.

The nurse nods sympathetically, asks him a few more questions about the issue, if he’s receiving treatment, or at least has in the past, if he’s told any of his friends about it. He answers strangely candidly, voice small and hesitant. Fifteen minutes have passed, and James is still sniffling and can’t seem to steady his hands. The nurse lays her palms flat on the desk and shifts forward in her seat, a bit closer to him.

“You know, love, you did get sick, and I don’t think anyone would judge you if you decided you wanted to go home.” Going home means calling either his aunt or uncle, Michelle and the girls being told he left early, then definitely wanting to get told why. Regardless, James knows he won’t be able to focus on his schoolwork, and if he were to return to class late and looking a right mess, it’s all going to come out anyway, so he gives in. What’s the point in fighting it? James is far too tired for that. Miss O’Donnell suggests he go into the side room of sick beds and have a lie-down while she calls his aunt, and even though it feels like admitting defeat, it’s also nice to shut his eyes in a dark, quiet room and focus on breathing straight. 

After some time, the nurse’s phone rings, and when she’s done talking to the person on the other end––the secretary, James assumes––she slips out into the main office, likely filling in his aunt on the situation, spilling the secrets of his shortcomings that he’s been trying so hard to keep. He’s ashamed, thinks he should’ve just bucked up and powered through it for the rest of time, but still…he’s so goddamn tired. 

Miss O’Donnell comes back and tells him his aunt is there, and James gathers up his stuff and shuffles out into the main office, where Deirdre is waiting for him with a strangely worried look on her face. He’s glad she has the day off today and he didn’t have to interrupt her work, but interrupting her one day of reprieve seems just as bad. 

For much of the car ride, they’re both silent, letting the sound of the running tires tumbling down the streets fill the air with its consistent, low grumble. James stares out the window and can feel Deirdre’s eyes bore into the back of his head every once in a while. 

“Our Kathy never mentioned any anxiety disorder to us, you know?” They’re at a stop, letting a woman in a pencil skirt and heels cross the road, probably on her way to pick up some lunch. James watches her pass, keeps his eyes anywhere but his aunt. 

“Yeah, well, she was a bit embarrassed by it. I don’t blame her, I am too.” James thinks the reason he’s being open for once must have something to do with that bone-deep weariness settling inside of him. Just like when the boys from the Catholic school did a number on him, it seems all the resolve, all the morale has left his body. “Just kind of proves that everyone’s right about me being soft and all.” Deirdre sighs, and James is ready to accept it as an agreement, a confirmation that he’s a wuss, a right embarrassment. Not only did she have to take in a nephew that was English, but one that was weak as well. 

“James, I’m a nurse. I’ve seen enough patients who were struggling with this to know it’s not a matter of being soft or not.” The answer is much more sensitive and consoling than James would’ve expected from his hard-as-nails aunt, and he finally turns to her in shock, but her eyes are firmly on the road. 

He appreciates the sentiment, but right now he doesn’t even have it in him to reply.


	2. Act II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait. i wanted to get further in the third act before i posted the second, and i've been in a funk the past week or so, but not that i'm coming out of it i was finally able to get some work done on this!!!
> 
> apologies for any mistakes. i do edit but sometimes i overlook things

Michelle’s not one for worry—never has been—so when James doesn’t show up to English and Clare and Erin start cacking themselves, she really doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. Sure, James isn’t really one to skip class, but there was a load of other reasons he could’ve been missing. She honestly wouldn’t be all that surprised if she were to find out some girls kicked him about a bit; he is quite soft and his still-healing cuts and yellowing bruises would make him stand out as an easy target to someone like Big Mandy and her laggies, but he’d survive. He’s fine, there’s no need to cause a ruckus and she tells them so.

“You’re telling us to be calm?” Clare’s whispers, though her voice is shrill and panicked enough that Michelle is surprised their teacher hasn’t looked up and told her to stuff it. “One of our best friends could be getting killed at the hands of those Catholic school boys at this very moment, and you’re expecting me to calm down?” Christ, he’d survived a beat-down from those guys before and he’d walked out alive. A little worse for the wear, but _fine_ , and Michelle has a headache listening to her friends conspiring on crazy theories. 

“Alright, calm down, Clare! The dickhead can handle himself, and besides, what’s the point in kicking up a fuss about the English prick?” 

“Maybe they beat him up because he’s English.” Orla is leaning back in her chair, head lolled back, staring up at the assignment they’re meant to be doing, with it held high above her. 

“Yes, Orla, that’s exactly why they beat him up,” Erin says. “That much _should've_ been obvious. Which is why we’re ‘kicking up a fuss,’ Michelle! There’s a reason they didn’t send him to that school!” She keeps switching between furiously scribbling at her papers and twisting her body towards Michelle and Clare to add her opinions. It gives Michelle fucking whiplash, she swears, just watching it. 

“Why, because he has no balls?” Erin stares at her incredulously (Michelle isn’t really looking at her, adjusting her blazer and reclining in her seat, but she can imagine her dumbfounded facial expression––she knows her well enough by now). 

“‘Because he has no balls.’ No! Because those heathens at the boys’ school would kill him for being English!”

“Maybe his country should’ve thought of that before they invaded us so many fucking times.” 

“You’re supposed to be his cousin! Don’t you care?” Clare jumps back in, clutching her work in her tight grasp. She’s the only one who’s actually progressed in the assignment since the bell had rung. 

Michelle’s got a comment ready on the tip of her tongue when the nun at the front finally shushes them, holding a knotted finger up to her thin, wrinkled lips. Clare and Erin hurry back to their vocabulary list, pencils scraping and backs hunched, meanwhile Michelle sits with her pencil in hand and thinks about how it’s absolutely disgusting to get old.

* * *

James doesn’t even turn up at lunch time, and when their French teacher goes to call his name in attendance later, he mutters a reminder to himself that James went home. Michelle is livid that her mam or da had bailed him out of school and not her, but it also finally tips some small, wriggling unease into her stomach. Just a bit! She didn’t care that much and she’d kill anyone who tried to claim she did. 

After school, as the girls are climbing on to the bus, Clare follows closely behind her, still rambling about assignments and upcoming exams and James’ early departure. They all just sort of tune her out for the first good chunk of the ride; she’d wear herself out eventually, sometimes it’s just best to let her do her thing.

“Maybe he’s got a deathly illness,” Orla adds, as helpful as ever at diffusing the situation! 

“You know, Orla, you might be right—” Michelle thinks Erin agreeing with her cousin must’ve just ripped a whole in the fucking sky. “—and I absolutely think someone needs to go with Michelle to check in on him, but my ma wants me and Orla home, so it’ll have to be Clare.” 

“Well, I would, but in the event that he _is_ sick, I might sit this one out.” And that she does, gathering her stuff up as quickly as possible as the bus begins to slow down at her stop. “Call me later and let me know, though!” 

“What happened to you pushing us all to swoop in and save his life?” Michelle calls after her. “‘Don’t you care?’” Clare just shoots a quick wave as the bus begins to roll past her. Her friends are such pricks. 

When Michelle finally gets home, Deirdre is absolutely ripping into someone on the phone (which she had reconnected after she thought James and her had learned their lesson in calling dodgy chat lines), who Michelle soon realizes is her Aunt Kathy down in London, and her mam is tearing her to shreds about James, who’s nowhere to be seen. Probably hiding upstairs. She couldn’t blame him. 

“I just don’t understand how you could dump him off and not even tell us all of his medical concerns!” Michelle listens in as she goes to the fridge for a mineral, and if Deirdre notices her, she doesn’t tell her to leave. “It is a medical concern, Kathy! You’re going to tell a nurse she doesn’t understand what is and isn’t a medical concern?!” Deirdre sounds absolutely boiling, with an intense frustration and anger that Michelle rarely sees, even from her firm, no-nonsense mother. Deirdre is no stranger to anger or frustration, but this has a burning and familial fire to it, unlike the anger she gives for schoolwork and detentions. It sort of frightens her. 

“Well just because he was better doesn’t mean he was ‘passed it.’ It just meant it was working, and it doesn’t work if you pull him out of his treatment because you want to up and dump him off.” Michelle stands, back pressed up against the counter, holding her drink half-up to her face, her crooked elbow resting on her hip bone, watching the scene go down. She can’t even hear her Aunt Kathy, yet she can imagine every response she’d say in that sickly sweet voice of her’s. The word treatment is very stark and official to her, and it’s enough to make her accept that she does have some concern bubbling inside of her. _Was_ James sick? If he was, she couldn’t imagine why on Earth he wouldn’t say anything. He was polite to a fault, never one to cause a fuss, but the idea that he would withhold information of genuine importance to his well-being from them just so he wouldn’t bother anyone is alarming to her. Sometimes Michelle has no idea how her Aunt Kathy of all people raised such a bloody considerate prick (they both drive her up the fucking wall, so at least they have that in common). 

When Deirdre hangs up, she begins bustling around the kitchen, trying to get things together for that night’s tea. She has work later, and Michelle almost wants to take her hands and tell her to just slow down. Her mam was always doing the most—a hard-worker if Michelle had ever seen one.

“The nerve of that woman!” Deirdre huffs. Michelle is honestly surprised she isn’t being told off for listening in on a private conversation. It makes sense though, her mam was never one to mess around with matters of family. “Not only does she abandon her wain, but she doesn’t tell the people she left him with his healthcare needs? It’s bloody ridiculous.” All this talk of healthcare needs, and she feels extremely in the dark about what the situation even is. Though she supposes her entire family was in the dark until just recently.

“What healthcare needs? What’s wrong with the prick?” Her mother shoots her a look that clearly says she is not in the mood to deal with Michelle’s insults right now. “Does it have something to do with why he left today?” Deirdre sighs, throwing together sandwiches all the while, tossing lettuce and lunch meat onto the bread with a speed Michelle is certain only mothers possess, having to get the wains fed while dealing with their own shite. 

“Yes, it seems all this time our James should’ve been getting help with anxiety and depression and no one bloody thought to tell us! I wonder how Kathy would’ve felt if the wee lad and gone and––god forbid––hurt himself or something. I never thought the woman would stoop so low.” Michelle blinks, caught on anxiety and depression. She always just thought James was soft and odd, and she had no qualms making that known, but she never would’ve guessed he had something actually wrong up there. The only exposure she’s had to anything of the sort was on the telly, with emaciated women smoking cigarettes and violent men talking to the walls and all that shite; she has a very hard time connecting her English prick of a cousin to those images. She doesn’t even know how to process this. 

“Anxiety and depression?” she asks dumbly. God, she sounds like a fucking eejit, just repeating her mother’s words back to her.

“Yes, and I’ll not hear a word out of you.” Her mother turns and points to her with her sandwich knife still poised in her hand, her expression deadly serious. “This stuff can be proper serious, and I’ll not have you going and making the lad feel any more ashamed than his own mother has made him.” Michelle is a bit offended by the notion. Sure, she took the mick out of James a lot, but she knew when it was time to get serious. Some people misunderstood her standards of what did and did not deserve her earnestness, but it made sense to her, and even she wouldn’t make someone feel like shit for an issue like this. 

“I wouldn’t do that, Mam.” Deirdre makes a _tch_ sound under her breath, and as much as Michelle wants to respond further, she holds her tongue, downing the rest of her mineral and placing it on the counter. It makes a metallic clanking noise, harsh and jarring in the now quiet kitchen. 

“I suppose it’s not too out of line for your Aunt Kathy to keep something like that to herself, but I don’t know why James wouldn’t tell us. Your father and I are supposed to be taking care of him, if it were you or our Ryan, I’d want someone to know!” There’s an abnormally gentle tone to her mother’s voice, and it fills Michelle’s chest with this annoying soppy feeling, like when she was a kid waking up from a nightmare, crawling into bed with her parents and being wrapped in Deirdre’s arm. 

“He’s too bloody polite to say anything.” 

Deirdre sighs and looks at her watch, brow furrowed and tight, stress written on her features. 

“Right, Michelle, plate these up for me. Your father isn’t going to get back from work until late and I have to leave soon and I still haven’t even gotten dressed.” Typically, Michelle might whine about how she hasn’t even gotten changed yet, but she supposes that that’s her own fault this time, and she’s been shocked into an uncharacteristic silence. As much as she moaned about her cousin, she didn’t want to think he actually had something wrong with him, something hurting him. James had sort of secretly wriggled into a soft spot inside of her, earning a piece of her protective side that she didn’t typically like to dish out. 

Her mam hurries upstairs, and Michelle hears her call to James that tea is on the table as she rushes to get into her uniform and out the door. Life never rests in this home.

She cracks into another drink, taking advantage of her mother’s distraction. Her mam hates her to have too many minerals in a day, spouting the usual parent bullshit of it corroding your bones and what-not. Soggy teeth or not, Michelle has no intentions to give up drinking Cokes. James enters the kitchen quietly, though he does shoot some raised-eyebrow looks between her cola and the can she’d already downed since getting home. Cheeky bastard.

As Deirdre leaves and James sits across from her, Michelle leans back in her chair and crosses her arms against her chest. 

“Clare and Erin were absolutely shittin’ themselves when you disappeared. You got them real worked up, dickhead.” Okay, she wasn’t going to ostracize over something he couldn’t control, something that genuinely was hurting, but she was absolutely going to rib him at least a little. Anything else would be strange, not only for her, but for James. Their back-and-forth was a key component of their relationship, even throughout the seriousness of things like James almost leaving Derry, there had still been time to tell each other to piss off or sling some offensive nicknames. “What even happened? Mam just gave me some general details.” 

James sighs and drops his gaze down to his sandwich, barely picked at. He has that same serious look that Deirdre did, the one Michelle hates, that makes it seem like things are grave and need careful handling, and she always feels like she’s unable to tread as lightly as those situations require her to. She’s not usually one to overthink things like this, maybe her soft cousin was rubbing off on her, he seemed to do that quite often. 

“I’m really tired of talking about all this, Michelle.” There’s a resignation in his voice that’s different. Typically he’d tell her to piss off and then they’d move on, but this manner of speech gives the distinct feeling that the subject is sensitive, something he’d like to avoid having picked apart even more than his mam disappearing into London or his ambiguous sexuality. 

She won’t press him yet, even though being careful isn’t her thing, she’s not a total dick, no matter what some of her dryshite classmates might think. Instead, as she stands up to take her plate over to the sink, she punches him across the shoulder, and says, “That’s for keeping secrets, dicko.” James smiles.

“Piss off, Michelle,” he says. It’s nice to run somewhat back in the routine of their typical conversations, though James’ response sounds a little bit too relieved to hit quite the same; it doesn’t hold it’s usual bite, but instead resonates as a sort of thank you to her for letting it go. It’s odd.

“I won’t grill you now, but if you don’t tell the girls, I’ll have to, because Clare is practically about to start writing a fucking eulogy.”

* * *

Opening up to the girls about his mental health problems is one of the hardest things James has ever had to do. As much as he got poked at for being weak-willed and soft, being vulnerable is still extremely hard for him, and he supposes it might be some of his Irish blood making this so fucking difficult. As he slowly goes over what happened the other day, and that, yes, that _was_ because of a deeper rooted issue, the girls stare at him in a way that makes him feel like a notably peculiar and unsightly creature in a zoo––one that school children on field trips would have an absolute riot shitting themselves over how deformed it seemed. He wonders if maybe this is how Clare felt when she came out of the closet, and then he feels ridiculous and selfish for even comparing the two. He’s had his own fair share of questioning his sexuality, and he thinks he should’ve known better. He does know better. Maybe he’s just being hard on himself, but it’s hard to tell. Sometimes he really understands why people think he’s such a prick. 

Erin and Clare are extremely relieved that he’s okay, and Clare’s eyes are suspiciously teary as he tries to explain his below-average mental state (both girls hug him and chide him for scaring them, and then make him promise that he understand he can talk to them when he needs to).

Orla, in all her strange glory, asks, “Were you cursed as a baby, or something, James?” And James actually laughs a little at that and the girls are able to stop staring uncomfortably and thank him for telling them, then move on in a way that feels natural and not mean or dismissive. He really appreciates that even though their group is anything but graceful and dignified even regarding normal subjects, they’re not thoughtless about things that are important, it just takes them some time to sort themselves out. He can understand that. 

Still, the girls are odd with him in the upcoming days. Gentler and more stand-off-ish. It makes James feel alone, like in their eyes he’s become a brewing, violent storm, something they’re just waiting for it to snap and spew all over everyone. 

He always tried not to compare the situations of London and Derry, finding it does more harm to his psyche than good, but it still flashes in his mind that this is almost exactly what his mum did when the issue was originally detected and identified. The situation is somewhat different, with his friends’ awkward avoidance being born out of concern and unawareness regarding how they should handle it, how they should treat him now that they know (he wants to tell them that everything is exactly the same, nothing’s changed except the depth of their knowledge, but he isn’t sure how to go about that without being a prick and potentially hurting feelings), while his mum’s had appeared to be drawn from shame and embarrassment more than anything else. He may be a proper dick for thinking like this, but it still hurts that this could shift the dynamic of the relationships he’s come to love. 

James is overwhelmed with gratitude every time Michelle, who still seems rather unaffected by it all, takes the piss out of him or calls him some dumb name; when Orla keeps running about in her typical fashion, it makes him feel a bit less like the sun is about to get ripped out of the sky. As much as he loves the girls, sometimes they just didn’t seem to know what to do about things and just let themselves flounder in that odd panic for a bit—it’s a trait that he finds both endearing and frustrating. 

His frustration hits a breaking point when Michelle insults him and Clare chides her with a small, panicked gasp. He knows Clare absolutely means well, she always does, yet much in the same fashion as the time during the Orange March, when Erin reminded him how little he understood about Derry, it boils over and he loses it. Just a little bit. 

“Can everyone stop treating me like I’m made of fucking glass?” he groans. They’re eating lunch, and he sort of slides down the wall, further into his seat on the floor. His legs point out in front of him and he stares at them, feeling like they're a meter long, cumbersome and intrusive, and he wishes he could crawl out of his skin so everyone would stop fucking looking at him. 

When he looks back up, the girls actually look remorseful, even Michelle, who he assumes has been gritting her teeth every time a painfully awkward exchange goes down between him and the girls. Orla mostly just looks curious and interested, which is how she regards most situations that crop up. It makes James feel a bit better, not being shut down like he had during the aforementioned Orange March.

“Well, I’m sorry James,” Erin begins, with one of her taken-aback looks. “It’s just I’ve never really known someone with a, you know, mental illness. I’m not sure how to go about things without adding to the problem.”

“Me neither,” Clare adds. “It’s like, what’s changed, what hasn’t? I care about you and I don’t want to hurt you by messing something up. It’s a bit confusing, honestly, and I don’t want to make it about me, but I’m also at a bit of a loss here.” They’re sorry enough that James regrets saying anything, which probably isn’t healthy, being so worried about expressing your feelings and the like.

“Well, that’s common enough.” He tries to lighten the mood, throwing in some natural ribbing, and the girls all chuckle. Michelle rolls her eyes, though he can read the faint smile playing on her lips. He hates to sober the mood again. “But, in all seriousness, really nothing has changed. This isn’t a new thing for me, you’ve treated me the same the whole time I’ve been here, and I haven’t snapped yet.” Cracking lame jokes makes the tight knots curling up in his chest loosen a little; there’s comfort in knowing that he’s at least actively trying to help make his friends feel better.

“I doubt it’d be very scary if you did, dickhead. You’re about as threatening as Jenny Joyce and her wee minion, whatever the fuck her name is,” Michelle drones. Once again, gratitude. He’d never thought sarcasm and insults would be so relieving. 

“Right, but, well, can I ask you a question, James?” Clare asks, then quickly adds on, “You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.” Talking about this stuff has always made him want to compress into a small, indistinguishable lump of atoms and disappear, but he wants to help his friends come to an understanding that they can feel at peace with. Paul had always encouraged him to open up more.

So, he lets them ask their questions, stuff like how long he’s been dealing with this and what it’s like and if he has to take meds. Some of them come across a bit insensitive or ignorant, but he understands. These things are pretty taboo with a lot of people in Ireland and England. Orla’s questions are sort of nonsensical, like the one about him being cursed as a baby, and it adds a nice, more joking layer to the conversation. After the questions wind down, Clare gives him a tight hug, and he buries his nose in the top of her head. Erin and Orla press into his sides as well, and even Michelle gives him an affectionate punch on the shoulder.

James notices a pretty sizable shift in things after their conversation. Everyone is a tad less awkward around him, and he’s able to breathe clearer as their days roll on like normal. It was almost nice to talk openly about things, though the thought of continuing still stops his breathing in his tracks. It’s a process, he supposes, and that’s okay for now. 

It’s even helpful to not feel like he totally has to hide what he’s feeling if it isn’t happy. He still downplays and tries to shake himself out of it, but the plight is easier, especially since the girls haven’t appeared to judge him if he’d been feeling down these past few days. It’s better. They all get better.

* * *

James finds that even with the heart-to-heart, things still climb down, and decides it was foolish to think that one conversation could change the course of his thinking, even though that hadn’t been the case before. Regardless, he wishes it could’ve done something for him. He doesn’t have another appointment for about a week and a half––apparently the office is busy enough that the only reason he’d got in this early at all was because Deirdre had used her position to pull some strings. There were other patients for the next good chunk of time. He absently thinks it’s odd that such a bottled up, emotionally closed town and its people would be flooding psychiatrists and psychologists’ offices. 

The office had just made him anxious, really, even more-so than his typical new-doctor-nerves, and he didn’t know why that was. It wasn’t like the therapist was going to make fun of his accent or judge him for being English. (At least he hoped not. Oh, God, was he? If that’d ended up being true, then he’d have to worry about being denounced for things like him being slightly effeminate, or certainly _not_ being gay like everyone thought, but not being decidedly _straight_ either, or his lack of drive or practical skill or strength.) 

His first meeting with his new therapist leaves him disillusioned and panicked, still clinging to the memories of his old doctor and the comfort he’d had with him. It’d taken ages for him to get to that point with that doctor, and a piece of him mourns that lost relationship, retreats inside of him and settles down in the shadows to lick its wounds. 

That night his mum calls and asks to speak with him. He takes the phone into the bathroom for some relative privacy, cord pulled taut, running under the doorframe, and sits on the edge of the toilet. He’s hopeful, thinking she’d heard from Deirdre about his appointment and was calling to check in and ask about it (and he would tastefully avoid mentioning that much of the session his therapist had asked him questions about her and seemed less than impressed with what he heard). She very briefly does ask, which is pleasantly surprising, only to reveal her real motivation for calling, which is to inform him that she’s been seeing a new man. He remembers when not even two months prior she’d claimed he was going to be the only man in her life. What a fat fucking joke. 

James is happy for her, or at least he wants to be, but it’s hard given how little focus Kathy has given about their own floundering relationship. His inner child—hell, even himself from just a year ago—is screaming at him that this isn't her mess to fix, it’s his. His responsibility is to fix the things he did wrong and make her love him again. But 16-year-old James is so exhausted and so tired of fighting to get his mother back (sometimes he questions if he ever had her at all), and he just wants to lie in bed and sleep for the next 700 years. Kathy could date all the dumb fucking blokes she wanted while he was gone, hopefully to get it out of her system and actually fulfill the promise of time and moments spent together. 

“Oh, how long until you abandon him too?” He supposes his temper snaps a bit.

“James!” His mother sounds affronted. Horrified. It reminds him of all the times she’d fought with Paul and had been staggered to hear that someone had an issue to bring up with her, as though secret lunches with her male “friends” and neglecting her family weren’t a valid reason to pick a bone with someone.

“Sorry, I guess it’s just getting old to see you keep filtering through people you claim to care about. But I guess this one really could be ‘the only man in your life.’” The soil is rising around him and James just keeps digging away, slamming his shovel into the unyielding ground and ignoring the blisters in his palms and the light glinting off the metal and into his watering eyes. 

“Well, James—” She puts a heaving, sarcastic pressure into his voice that’s enough to make him flinch. “—if you remember, I believe it was you who decided not to come home. I told you many times, I had a lot going on, and when I sorted all that out you threw it in my face.” James is surprised at the amount of anger he feels welling up in his chest, listening to her flip her abandoning him on its head to use it to get back at him. He’s already spent sleepless nights running over the events of that day in his head, trying to gauge if he was really as ungrateful and fallacious as he sometimes felt, and he’s tired of being berated for finally doing something for himself. His mum has an incredible knack for dragging him along in her little bubble, then shaming him for taking a breather. 

“Oh, my apologies for wanting to stay with people who actually care about me.” 

“You’re really going to accuse me of not caring for you? Don't be so dramatic, James. I came back for you when I could.”

“Yeah, only because you wanted me to peddle your stickers.” Michelle’s words had struck painfully close to home, even when he was still mentally prepared to return to London, scratching at his nerves and trying to force him to acknowledge the truth in the statement. His mum is selfish. She only cares for him when it benefits her. He knows this—has known all of this for years—but it still hurts, and it’s foolish that it still hurts. It’s even more foolish that when his mother doesn’t respond, despite his anger, he’s flooded with a panicked urge to apologize and say he didn’t mean it. Anything to make her not be mad at him anymore. His resolve considerably weakens. “You hardly even asked how I’m doing, or how things with my new doctor went, and you _know_ how hard it all is, you’ve seen it. You know.” He hates how weak his voice sounds, hates the quiver in his suspiciously high voice.

“I can’t listen to you when you’re so upset. I mean, you’re practically screaming at me.” He doesn’t have the energy to remind her he’s barely raised his voice. “I try, James. I try my hardest, but it’s like you don’t even want to be happy.” Kathy sighs to herself, and he can imagine her sitting at the old kitchen table, in her running a hand through her hair, in one of her pantsuits. “You’ve always been so difficult, love.” James thinks the endearment should’ve softened the blow, but if anything it makes it worse. Those gentle terms weren’t meant for conversations that hurt so much.

“...I know.” Unable to listen to another word, he finally just hangs up and brings the phone back to the kitchen, then stands there, focuses on the cool tile underneath his feet and lets the lethargy creep in.

* * *

As the sharp pressure of conflict in his chest continues to slip away, that dull feeling that followed hangs around and starts responding to situations—answering to normal things and happy things and all. He couldn’t say he was down, per say, but he couldn’t say he wasn’t either. James has no idea what he’s feeling anymore, and finds mere ghosts of what he _should be_ feeling echo out to him from somewhere deep and buried. 

He doesn’t really sleep anymore. He’s exhausted, almost painfully so, yet can never shut his mind off long enough to grab more than a few hours of sleep. James spends his nights laying in bed and tracing the lines in the ceiling with his eyes, counting the different cracks that have split open in the plaster. Sometimes he’ll go down into the kitchen and nurse a glass of water or a mug of tea at the kitchen table, shoulders drawn up to his ears, muscles twisted taut. On particularly bad days, he’s still wide awake when his Aunt Deirdre or Uncle Martin either rise for the day or return from a late shift. 

His aunt finds him one morning, still sitting in the kitchen with his half-drunk cup of tea in his hands. It’s long gone cold. She asks if he's gotten any sleep, and when he doesn’t answer, sends him up to his room with a quip about how he’s lucky it’s Saturday. James hopes he doesn’t sleep too late. With all his aunt has done for him over the past months, the last thing he wants is for her to have to deal with Michelle griping about him getting to sleep in. 

He crawls into bed and wraps himself in blankets, half-expecting to still be unable to rest, but after running on very little sleep each day for a couple of weeks, he crashes. He sleeps for hours, yet when he wakes up he still feels that bone-deep weariness settle inside of him. He disappoints even himself these days.

* * *

The next week his mum calls to chat with Deirdre, and James half-listens from the living room, waiting for when he’s inevitably called in, wherein he and Kathy pretend that nothing happened in the days before. James felt like they were getting pulled away from each other and wrapped against their opposing lives and opinions, tied to the same routine of feigned ignorance. 

As the conversation between two sisters winds down (it never takes that long before Deirdre finds a reason to pass the phone along), he hears his aunt mutter his name into the phone, sewn into the lilt of a question. He gets up and heads towards the kitchen without waiting to get called, seeing no use in making his aunt yell and his cousin’s program get drowned out. His aunt is asking Kathy “what she means,” which is quickly followed by a _don’t be ridiculous, he’s right here_. James waits with his brow furrowed, wondering what’s going on on this phone and what his mum’s saying that’s ridiculous. 

Even from his centimeters away, the click of the phone smashing into the docket is loud enough to hear, and it dawns on him that Kathy’s ridiculous tale was the reluctance—not just reluctance, actually, outright refusal—to speak with her son. When Deirdre hangs up their own phone, she turns and looks at him with a gentle, sympathetic look in her eyes. He almost wishes his friends and family would stop fixing him with that rueful gaze, as well as the tone of the same vein. He understands and appreciates the intended effect, but it gives them the same energy as someone bracing themselves for a crash, like they expect for him to collapse in on himself under the heaping mound of his life, lost underneath everything that encompasses him. 

“Ach, James, your mam wanted to talk to you, but she just had to go.” Deirdre doesn’t do much more to convince him, never one to work too hard at trying to keep a secret. Even when a lie might spare some feelings, she was honest and she didn’t press things further than obligations’ sake. It stings, but he’d rather her muster up a laughably lackluster excuse like that than try to force an explanation and ultimately make things worse. He’s sick of being dragged along anyway. 

“It’s okay. I get it.” They both know that he doesn’t buy that Kathy had wanted to talk to him, but neither one stresses the issue. James returns to the living room and plops down on the couch next to Michelle, letting the sound of their reality show fall into white noise, and feels the languor come pouring off his shoulders in waves. If he pulls his attention off of it for even a moment, he’s sure it’ll overpower him—swell around him, pull him under the dark, crashing crest and flood his entire system.

* * *

In English they go shuffle through their poetry unit, and when they dive into the world of Sylvia Plath, it fascinates both him and Erin. They dig through _The Colossus_ with a fine-tooth comb, and when Erin announces that Sylvia Plath is the poet of the century, a woman who lives and breathes influence and makes her proud of her womanhood, he’s inclined to agree (he’s not even a woman, though it makes him feel a bit more comfortable recognizing that it’s okay for men to have femininity). 

He feels for her poetry what Erin describes feeling towards the whole bulk of literature. It excites him, and he understands Erin’s passion a bit better. Not only that, but it makes him feel something nice for once, even if briefly. He was always a sucker for the arts, and though his preference tended to lean towards the visual arts or films and TV, he’s always loved a really good piece of writing. Reading The Colossus sparks that passion for creation that he’s lost over the years, and it’s so reminiscent of how his chosen arts made him feel back when things were better that he almost cries.

The group all goes to the library, and while Michelle and Orla piss about and Clare tries desperately to both study and keep them in control, he and Erin forgo their actual schoolwork to pour over Sylvia Plath’s collections of poetry. Derry’s library smells of paper and dust, the air thick and warm, laden with the scent. 

The poem _Departure_ speaks of nature and goats and beaches and stone. It reminds him of riding in the car with Paul as they went for a drive along the far, winding roads of Devon while visiting Paul’s parents. The older couple lived in a small, spacious and grassy area, and when the family gatherings got overwhelming, he and his step-dad would follow the countryside lanes of East Prawle for some miles until they hit the coast, all the while the air streamed through the open windows and eventually turned salty. 

He finds comfort in the memory—looking back on the goats and watching them clamber for a taste of the sharp, saturated air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading :)) i hope you all are staying safe and taking care of yourselves. have a lovely day (or night) <3
> 
> edit from june 24: hey, sorry for the wait guys!! i've been in a bit of a funk and writing's been a little hard, but i'm working on the last chapter and it hopefully shouldn't take too long!!! thank you for your patience


	3. Act III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. I had a little depressive episode and couldn't really motivate myself for a while, but I got it out.
> 
> I edited this, but some mistakes may have been overlooked. I always go back and check and update things later. 
> 
> TW for a suicide attempt in the first section of this chapter. It's not too graphic.

When Michelle and Deirdre go out shopping one day, and Martin is at work, James finds himself alone in the house thinking about his conversation with his mum the other day, and furthermore, the fact that she’d rather hang up than speak with him since their fight. Things have felt absolutely hopeless ever since. He’s never been one to fight back, really. Even when deciding to stay in Derry, he’d kept his resentments and feelings of abandonment hugged tight to chest, apologizing profusely and ignoring the ache that had been thrumming in the back of his mind since she’d dumped him off with her sister. The radio silence between them since their argument makes him think he was right to never fight her. He knew it was stupid, he really did, but he still found himself panicking and floundering for her love, letting his boyish awe for his mother overshadow all the shit she’d put him through over the years. He must be proper stupid for being so weak against her. 

He pulls the phone off the docket and finds his hands shaking as he dials his old home phone number (he wants to drum it up to the lack of sleep, but he isn’t sure that he can). The beeping of the keys is jarring in the silent kitchen. His mum answers on the third ring and the sound of her voice leaves him briefly paralyzed.

“Hi, Mum.” On the other side of the phone, hundreds of miles away in London, his mother is silent, and it can’t be for that long, but it feels like an eternity. 

“Hello, James. How have you been?” He lets them fall back into their normal routine, the one where they ignore the glaring issues in their relationship and pretend that nothing has happened at all. James hates this song and dance, and yet it’s still strangely comforting in its habitualness. They spend a few minutes discussing safe topics—school, how cold it is this winter, work, even his mum’s new boyfriend (it’s not like he hadn’t expected her to move on; he’d known it was coming eventually, even before his mum and Paul officially split)—but eventually the conversation dwindles, and in a moment of what could be considered proper idiocy, considering how poorly it went last time, he decides to air out some of his feelings. 

“Mum… Why did you hang up before speaking with me the last time you called?” 

“Oh, didn’t your aunt tell you? I had to run off, had a million errands to run, paperwork to do for the business. I told her to tell you, did she not?” Kathy deflects. A part of James just wants to accept the excuse at surface value as he would’ve back in London, but he’s desperately tired of overlooking all the things that need to be said. 

“Yeah, she did, but… We both know that that’s not true.” Kathy sighs into the phone, and James can almost feel her breath passing over his skin. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and his shoulders reflexively hunch at the sound. When he was a kid, the sound of his mum’s breath had been calming—something steady and strong to focus his attention on while he was leaning against her shoulder, hugging her, sitting in her lap. He doesn’t remember when it stopped being comforting. 

“Well, I was under the assumption that you didn’t wish to speak with me, after our last conversation.” He winces. His mum always had a knack for making him feel ashamed of his actions, but he tries to pump himself up and forge on. 

“You’re my mum, of course I want to talk to you, but I also want to be able to talk about things with you when I’m upset.” James vaguely has the sense of being sucked into a riptide, unable to stop himself from going further and further from shore, wading into the conflict and letting it submerge him. 

“James, you’re always upset with me lately.” He weakly mutters back that that isn’t true, but his voice sounds shaky and strained even to his own ears. “Honestly, love, with the way you gripe at the world, sometimes it seems like you’ve been happier if I really had gotten the abotion.” 

His entire world tilts on its axis at her words. The sky must be falling down—or at least it feels like it. When he was a kid, he often worried that one day he’d fall upwards into the sky, and in this moment he thinks maybe he was right to feel so worried. Surely that feels the same as being told by your _fucking mum_ that maybe you should’ve been aborted. It’s like every primary school bully who tells you that you were a mistake, only amplified to a sharp, thunderous degree because that’s his _mum_.

“Oh…” James really isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say to that. Is he meant to apologize or fight back and claim that it isn’t true? He’d be lying if he said that he hadn’t wondered if things would be better—not just for him, but for everyone—if he’d never been born. Having his mum confirm that not only did she originally intend to get an abortion, but that when she looked back at it, she didn’t automatically think she was glad she didn’t go through with it is akin to how he imagines it’d feel if she stabbed him. It’s a sharp, throbbing pain in his chest, his heartbeat amplified, each beat of its pulse painful. 

Even the empty Mallon home is too loud and too amplified in this moment; the colors piercing and the light bouncing off the tiles nearly blinds him. A car drives by outside the house and he flinches at the sound. 

Muttering some brief excuse about having to go, James hangs up. What else is there to say? His mother thinks he’d be better off having been scraped out of her womb and forgotten. There’s nothing else to do. He has no way to fix this, no way to make up for the years she’d wasted raising him, no way to make her love him. Everything around him is jarring and judging, yet he’s so quintessentially small and alone. 

It’s really too easy to start the process, but maybe that’s just because he’s thought about it before—his body is able to run on autopilot, so to speak. He’s not even sure what’s going to happen, but he knows he’s so exhausted and so lonely, and his medication is _right there_. 

While he sits and swallows (over and over and over), he begins to thumb to a page in the book of Sylvia Plath poetry he borrowed from the library. The poem he’s searching for is called _Edge_ , and it ends by talking about the moon looking down on a deceased woman and feeling nothing, being used to witnessing this cycle of life—used to watching the ticking finally stop. He thinks he might need this, a reminder that things will be okay. Life will go on without him. 

Instead, he stops on the poem called _Daddy_ , and though he knows the meaning of that poem is dark and twisted, he still instinctively thinks of Paul, down in his London flat, living his life without James. Did he ever think of him anymore? Did he ever look back on the years he spent with James and his mum and wish that things could’ve been different? 

He decides to go down to the kitchen and call Paul one more time. It’s been ages since they’ve spoken, and he misses him dearly. He vaguely remembers reading the line “If not now, when?” somewhere, though he can’t recall for the life of him where; it still seems to apply, even if he can’t dredge up the memory of who wrote it. 

Paul answers on the fourth ring, and his voice is both comforting and overwhelmingly distant. It reminds of the good times of _Doctor Who_ and lunch at the chippy and walks through the London nighttime, but also of how far away those times were. It was only a few months ago, yet it feels like a century. James feels like he’s a thousand years old, and when he greets his old step-dad, his voice sounds like it too. 

“Alright, James? How’ve you been?” They go through the banal back and forth of catching up, and James’ brain feels fuzzy. He guesses it translates in his manner of speech, because it doesn’t take very long for Paul’s voice to turn concerned. “You don’t sound too good. You okay?” There’s something maudlin in the fact that Paul is still able to pick up on red flags. He’s been in Derry over a year now, and hasn’t spoken to Paul nearly as often as he’d like to, yet he still seems to understand. He really was the closest thing James had to a father—not just a father, he corrects despondently, any parent at all. 

“Paul, you don’t call me much. You said you were gonna call me.” His voice sounds whiny to his own ears. 

“I know, James, and I should’ve called you more, I know I should’ve. Are you okay, though? What’s going on, son?” He sounds really freaked out. James always hated when he’d make his step-dad nervous; it never felt good to worry your loved ones, especially when they were probably the only loved one you had.

With no control over his mouth, James mutters something about having taken a lot of pills. Paul curses under his breath and begins talking with a desperate tone. 

“Shit, Jamie. Shit. Hang on, I’m going to hang up and call someone and then I’ll call right back. I’ll call right back.” He tries to protest, but the world pitches underneath him, and he sinks to the ground instead, presses his back up against the cabinet and lets the phone hang loosely in his hand, wrapped around his knees, listening to the dial tone blare out. 

When Paul calls back, things are really fuzzy. James answers blearily and listens to his old step-dad sputter reassurances, questions and curses. He’s panicking, clearly, and James feels bad for putting him in this situation, but he just wants to go to sleep so bad. 

“I’m sorry, Paul,” he murmurs. “But you know what? My mum said she wondered if things would be better if she’d aborted me. My own mum.” His eyes are welling up with tears, and James doesn’t fight them—just lets them fall silently from his eyes. No wracking sobs or snot bubbles. This is all very different than he’d ever imagined it’d be. 

“Oh, Jamie…”

James listens to Paul soothe him, and listens to the ringing in his ears. When the sirens start approaching, he can barely hear anything at all over all the buzzing.

* * *

When Michelle and Deirdre return home late that afternoon, no one greets them, which is odd because it’d seemed like nothing could’ve dragged James out of the house today, and her da was definitely supposed to be back from work by now. Despite being strange, she really doesn’t think much of it, and neither does Deirdre; it isn’t so odd for members of the Mallon family to slip in and out of the house as various errands and meetings pop up. 

She follows her mam into the kitchen to sort out the wee items they’d bought. Being a working class family with two kids to support, her and her mam really didn’t get to go on these runs to the shops. Before James had been around it was Ryan, and her and her mam never really got much to have much strictly mother-daughter bonding; Michelle has to admit (begrudgingly so), that ever since childhood, getting to go out and browse together holds a very special spot in her heart. She thinks Deirdre must feel similarly, seeming to enjoy the outings and continuing to keep them up, down to where they picked up dinner while they were out, and then drove home and gathered in the kitchen to go through their bags. 

Just as she’s sitting down with a mineral, her mam picks up a note that’s been left on the counter, and her face shifts tone in a matter of seconds. It’s the same expression as when she’d found out her friend had died years ago, and Michelle has only seen it a handful of times.

“Mammy, what’s happened?” Deirdre slaps the paper down on the counter and picks her purse back up, mouth pinched and eyes clouded. 

“Your da’s left a note saying that James is in hospital.” She’s already beginning to move out of the kitchen. “Leave that stuff there for now, we’re going down.” Michelle is grateful that her mother doesn’t try to get her to stay behind, like she would’ve when something serious happened back when she was a wain, but that also makes her realize that the note must’ve been really unclear about the situation, meaning it could be absolutely grim.

The ride down to hospital is quick and tense. Deirdre toes the line of speeding without getting too far ahead, and Michelle wishes she’d just buck up and go faster. She wants to get there already so she can find out what her idiot cousin got himself into this time. She doesn’t want to admit that she needs to make sure he was okay. She still feels some kind of jarred fuzziness, a sort of detachment from the reality around her, and acknowledging this would be like admitting it was real. Right now, she isn’t entirely sure it is.

* * *

There are very few things that would make Michelle cry; the obvious stuff like her goldfish dying when she was a child, or when she broke her arm; then the stuff of that she would barely even admit to herself, like a handful of films, or when her crush rejected her; then the stuff that hadn’t even happened to her, but would make anyone cry, like a grandparent dying. And one of those things—which had never even occurred to her as a possibility—was finding out that her cousin had tried to off himself. Something about that made it actually _sink in_ that James was a bit of a header (she’s suddenly aware for the first time that that word might be offensive), and she finds it frightening.

Michelle feels like a proper wagon for even thinking about this, but she mulls on the fact that it had been such a gas day before all this happened. It had been a day of innocent fun and bonding, very different from her usual escapades with the girls, getting sloshed and fecking around the town, looking for rides that they didn’t very often score successfully, yet it had still been enjoyable.

Now James is back there getting his stomach pumped because he had decided to act like a fucking eejit and mess around with his medication. She’s absolutely fuming, both at her cousin and herself: James for being a selfish git and trying to leave her, and her for not noticing that it was coming to this point. Though she’s sure the polite prick would tell her it wasn’t her fault, it still feels like that. He was her baby cousin, months younger than her and a thousand times nicer and softer. It was her job to protect him.

Her brother, Ryan, is sitting next to her, tapping on his legs incessantly. The movement grates her nerves, blurring the corners of her vision and distracting her from her mulling. What’s he got to be so nervous about? He hasn’t lived with James for the past year and a half. Michelle scolds herself internally, feeling a rare bit of remorse for her anger. James was Ryan’s cousin too, even if her brother hadn’t lived at home for a few years and hadn’t been in close quarters with him. 

“Michelle.” Her mother’s voice cuts through her reflective haze, and all the sharp noises of the waiting room shift back into focus. When she meets her mam’s gaze, her eyes are dark and weary, the weight of the past hour or so (how long had it even been since they saw the note?) engraved into the lines of her face, drawn and pinched under the harsh hospital fluorescents. “Didn’t you and the girls have plans tonight?” 

She’d totally forgotten that she and James were going to meet up with their friends at the Quinn’s home. It was meant to be a fun night of telly and greasy food, and maybe scoring some shifty alcohol and sneaking it up into Erin’s room. Her cousin wasn’t meant to be in hospital tonight.

“Oh, yeah. I guess I should probably call them.” Even she’s aware that her voice and mannerisms lack their usual bite—all her energy has drained away to be used on this long, arduous task of waiting and worrying.

As she shifts to pull herself out of the chair, Deirdre lays a hand on her thigh and tells her she’ll take care of it, call Mary and have her pass along the message. Michelle isn’t sure if she wants the girls to come speeding over when they find out or not. On one hand, it’d be nice to have support from some of the people she cares about most, but on the other hand, she isn’t sure she can handle all that nervous energy bundled up. Clare would be shitting her pants, Erin probably wouldn’t be able to stop nervously babbling, and Orla would just be sitting there looking at them all with her wide eyes and quiet disposition. Combined with all the chatter and the already tense energy in hospital, all that would probably make Michelle break down and start bawling. Her eyes have been watering this entire time, dripping tears every now and again, but she has a feeling that meltdown would be wet and ugly. 

Deirdre probably will tell Mary not to let the girls come down until there’s more news and progress, with her inside knowledge of how messy and stifling waiting rooms can get when they get overcrowded. She’s relieved to have an excuse not to face even more sets of prying eyes, but as the minutes tick by, she finds that she misses her friends—wishes for their odd comforts.

* * *

When James wakes up in hospital, he isn’t sure whether to cry or be relieved. Everything is too confusing and intense for him to really gauge the situation and his view of it. He watches the doctor and the nurses rush about the business of checking his vitals and asking him questions like an outsider. A piece of him isn’t even sure he’s actually awake. 

Eventually, the doctors finally leave and let his family come in and see him, and Michelle is royally pissed. She comes into the room and punches him firmly on the arm, then calls him a prick. His Uncle Martin lays a hand on her shoulder and tells her to simmer down, but there’s no chiding bite to his voice. Michelle looks at him for a moment, biting her lip, and then leans down for a brief but meaningful hug.

“You scared the shit out of us, you fecking arsehole.” As she releases him, James gets a better look at her face and decides not to comment on the red tear tracks streaking her face. He hates that he made his tough-as-nails cousin cry.

His family tells him they’re glad he’s okay, but otherwise they don’t press him into getting into the details, the why and _how-could-he_ and what not. He thanks them in his head, but there’s a disconnect between his brain and his voice and he can’t bring himself to say the words out loud. He hopes they’ll pick up on it anyway. James lets them talk between themselves and to him, voices stitched together in an unusually quiet murmur. He’s not used to his brash Irish family being so gentle and reserved, but then again, they’ve always managed to find ways to surprise him.

Deirdre lets him know that Paul is going to drive down as soon as he can get out of work and make the trip. It shouldn’t be more than a day or two. James is both excited to see his ex-step-dad and exceedingly nervous, because it’s been so long and he can’t shake the idea that things won’t be the same, will never be the same between him and the man he considered his father. When memories of the call he made earlier in the day come rushing back to him, it takes all of his efforts not to audibly groan in embarrassment.

Clinton’s speech feels like it was ages ago, like centuries had passed instead of a month-and-a-half. He has no idea how things got to this point so quickly, how he’d gone from happy and smiling and feeling refreshed to feeling lower than he ever had before, even more so than back in London, where not only was he depressed but he was borderline neglected as well. His best friend in London had committed suicide when they were fourteen, and after it’d happened James had promised himself he’d never let himself get so lost. Fat lot of good that did him. He feels like if Chris was here to see him, he’d be disappointed. James is disappointed. 

“Did you call my mum?” The entire family exchanges a look, which gets the message across clearly that someone had and things hadn’t gone well. He can’t say he’s particularly surprised.

“Yes, we did,” Martin answers. He pauses for a moment, and James can feel the internal debate as he chooses his words. “She was glad to hear you’re okay.”

“Is she coming up?” His aunt and uncle collectively sigh. Ryan is biting his lip nervously, and Michelle rolls her eyes, face laced with frustration. 

“No, James, she’s not,” Deirdre murmurs. “I’m sorry.” James thinks back on their conversation earlier, on all the days and months and years of putting him down and playing the victim. No, he’s not surprised at all. Once upon a time, this might’ve hurt a lot more. 

“Good.”

* * *

The girls visit him in hospital the next day. Deirdre had called Mary back a while after the Mallons had come into his room, letting her know that he’s indeed still alive and kicking, though a little too wiped out for the girls to come visit tonight. Visiting hours were almost over by that point anyway, and as much as James loves the girls, he had been relieved to not have to face them for the first time that same day. He knew they’d show up the next day, but at least it gave him some time to gather himself first.

After his family was asked to leave for the night, lingering in the doorway before reluctantly heading home to eat and wash off the day’s events, James had laid awake almost all night, staring at the ceiling and going over all the possible interactions he could have with his friends when they see him for the first time, most of them ending in some form of irrevocable disaster. 

The actual events are much less cataclysmic (even through all his anxieties, he can look back and admit that that typically is the case). In the morning, James’ psychiatrist comes in to see him and ask him about his medications, adjust things and figure the situation out. He leaves with the promise of finding a better, new prescription and dosage for him, as well as the heads-up that his therapist would also be coming in in the late afternoon.

The girls come in not too long after he leaves, and after the tight hugs and teary apologies for not helping him more (which he quickly shuts down—it’s _not_ their fault, and he’d never want them to think that it is), they fall back into their typical routine. At first it’s forced, making themselves enact their typical roles in conversations about school and their classmates and the different gossip floating around town, but eventually it feels natural again, and James likes the feeling that things can still be routine and comfortable despite the circumstances.

Listening to the latest tale of Jenny Joyce and her never-ending quest to prove herself as Derry’s biggest arsemonger, James rolls his shoulders out and actually finds it in himself to smile.

* * *

Paul arrives on the fourth and last day of James’ stay in the hospital. 

The doctor had been reluctant to let him go after the required 72-hours, suggesting maybe it’d be smart for him to sign him up for another week or so on the psychiatric floor. He’d said he’d probably benefit from a bit of a time-out, so to speak, and his aunt and uncle agree, but James is absolutely desperate to go home. They eventually concede, on the terms that in the stretch of time he’s staying home from school, he goes to frequent appointments with his doctors and actually tells someone if he starts feeling like he might hurt himself again. He knows a major piece of it is the fact that Paul’s work had sent him off with one of the company laptops (a piece of technology that amazes James, having never really seen one in person before) to work on, and he’d be able to stay for a while and keep an eye on his ex-step-son. He’s not allowed to close his door for a while either. It sucks, but he can’t say he doesn’t understand. 

When his step-dad comes into the room, there’s a clear look of anxiety on his face, and James can imagine it’s been there since he’d called him the other day. His own face probably mirrors it. There’s been a strange twisting feeling brewing in his gut, growing stronger every day he got closer to seeing his step-dad again. He stands, luckily free of the wires and cords that decorated his body during the first day or two of his stay, and Paul immediately grabs him, wraps him up in his arms and holds him close. He can feel his breath on his neck. It tickles, and reminds him of sitting on his mum’s lap back when things were simpler, when she actually loved him. James lets out what feels like his first full breath in months. 

All of his Irish friends and family are at work or school, and it gives them a chance to catch up without the prying eyes of people who hadn’t been privy to their life in London—who didn’t know the workings of their relationship. He sits back on the hospital bed and draws his knees to his chest, and Paul sits in the chair that’s been permanently moved right up to the edge of his bed.

They talk normally for a little stretch of time, going over work and school and James’ new friendships. The conversation eventually shifts to the… incident (sometimes, he has a hard time admitting what it was, even to himself. _Especially_ to himself, there’s no one to hold him accountable, to make the situation feel real). He fiddles with a loose fiber breaking free from the knee of his sweatpants. There’s a hole in his left sock, at the base of his heel.

As James tries to explain the phone conversation he’d had with Kathy in greater detail than he’d been able to on the phone, which really could be seen as the tipping point, the final straw, he gets choked up. It’s a mix of shame and guilt. For doing what he did, for worrying his family, for even acknowledging that phone call as the last thing he did before his attempt (it feels an awful lot like blaming his mum, and James has never been one to point fingers. In the back of his mind he thinks about that saying, when you point the finger at someone else, there are three pointing back at you. It feels relevant, though he can’t decide if it should or not). 

Tears well in his eyes, hot and brimming with contriteness. Paul stands up immediately, and hesitantly sits on the bed beside him. He’s transported back to the early days of their relationship, when things were still in the in-between of James hating Paul for “stealing” his mum and him turning into the only genuine parental figure he had. He shifts over, makes room for him, and Paul wraps an arm around him and runs a hand through his hair. His palm is wide and warm. For some reason, the feeling of it parting his curls is what makes the tears actually fall.

They sit like that for a while, and any awkwardness melts away, slips into the teardrops and becomes one, rolling off of him in thick, hot streams. It’s a weight off of his back.

He grips onto Paul’s arm, holds it tight against him, unbudging. And his step-dad—his father—is there. He’s still there when his aunt and uncle (his guardians now), sign his discharge papers. He’s still there as James walks out the doors, and gets a taste of the sunlight cutting through the thick winter air.

* * *

Orla comes to his home a few days into his period of rest and recovery. He’s spent most of these past few days jockeying between sleeping and going to therapy. He probably wouldn’t even eat or drink or get up to use the bathroom if it weren’t for his family pushing him to and making sure he took care of himself. His medication levels got upped, and before his body could even get used to being back on them at all, it had to start to adjust to higher levels. He never enjoyed the fog of new pills, and he thinks to himself that maybe if he and his mum had been honest about his needs to themselves and the Mallons, he never would’ve run out, and his body wouldn’t be spiralling quite so hard. 

Paul sends Orla up to his room, and when she enters James gets struck with a brief feeling of embarrassment for the state of things right now. His room is messy, the plate from the lunch Paul made him eat still sat in his nightstand. Earlier, when he’d looked into the bathroom mirror, he’d looked pallid and drained and grotty, and he doubts that that’s somehow gotten better since then. 

“Why aren’t you in school?” he asks. All the other girls were. He hadn’t seen any of them besides Michelle since that day in the hospital, not quite having the energy to face them again. He wanted to get back on his feet a bit more. Michelle had chided him for being a prick, saying the girls were really cacking themselves over his evasiveness, but he’d just told her that he wanted to have a better grip on things before he saw them, and she’d conceded. He knew she didn’t want to, and he appreciated that she would anyway. 

“I wanted to see you. It’s sad not having my friend around.” She drops onto his bed besides him, laying back and draping her legs across him. Her elbow presses into his ribcage. 

“Well, thank you, but how did you get your mum to let you skip?” 

“What do you mean? I just told her I was going to go see you.” He reckons it makes sense that Sarah wouldn’t really question her. They were a pair of oddities, and James really does love that about them. While sometimes aggravating, it was also endearing, and he loved how unique they were. He hopes someday he’ll get to a spot where he’ll be so unapologetically him.  
Somehow, Orla manages to convince him to leave the house with her. He barely even processes that he’s been coerced to do so, and just gets changed and follows her out of the house. Paul doesn’t do more than ask a few cursory questions. James thinks he’s probably just happy to see him going out and doing something. 

They walk down to the park and sit on a bench in their winter coats. The grass is crisp and it crunches beneath his shoes. There’s a few moments of comfortable silence, watching the birds and the trees in the breeze, and then Orla pulls a bag out of her pocket, and James is absolutely gobsmacked to see two rolls of skunk in it. 

“D’you want some hash?” She says it so calmly and naturally that James almost forgets what hash is. 

“What the fuck? Since when do you smoke?” 

“I don’t,” Orla responds, like this is a normal, everyday exchange, and like people who don’t smoke frequently walk around with joints in their jackets. “Michelle said those scones were funny, and Granda Joe brought some of them home, and I think so too. I thought you could use something funny. Those scones were crackin’.” James nearly cries at her thought-process. Though a strange way of going about it, he genuinely appreciates Orla’s nuggets of kindness and wisdom.

In London, people around school had talked about spliffs and the like, and being cousins with Michelle, he’d heard plenty about various drugs since moving to Derry as well. He wasn’t actually sure she had done any before, but she certainly knew quite a bit, like where to get them and what people had said they were like. It really doesn’t seem all that frightening, and while it may not be the smartest decision to make, the park is empty and they were right there. He was probably bound to end up trying something eventually, and who was he to turn down a friendly gesture? 

They use Orla’s fluorescent green lighter (it’s probably the first time it’s been used for one of its intended purposes), and though the breeze isn’t particularly heavy, they have to use their hands to protect the small, wavering flame. The heat brushes his fingers, and when he inhales, his lungs fill with an earthy warm feeling. It’s a welcome contrast to the frosty cloak that January has laid across the city. 

They pass the paper between each other, and James can taste the remnants of Orla’s candy-laced spit on the end. It’s strikingly intimate, indirectly sharing little pieces of themselves as they get high, and James is kind of happy that it’s just him and Orla. He loves all his friends, but he gets the sense that something like this is very different when there’s only two people, so vulnerable and exposed. Neither one bad, just different. He’s glad to share his first time getting stoned with her. 

If he had been given the chance to choose which friend he’d experience all this for the first time with, he thinks he probably would’ve picked Orla anyway. She has a funny way of looking at life with her mix of childlike innocence and wiseness. He feels like they experience life in a fairly similar way, letting it sweep them away while they watched in their hushed worlds. James has always felt a harmony with Orla, them both being seen as sort of peculiar and quiet. He’s become much more comfortable with Derry, but it still found ways to catch him off guard and confuse him, and it’s nice to have an ally. 

The sensation spreads throughout his body slowly, and then his limbs feel heavy, his muscles relaxing in his body. His head feels fuzzy, and his mouth is dry, but he’s certain that the swaying of the trees is more merry than it had been before. They only smoked one of the two rolls, sealing the other up in the bag and stuffing it back in Orla’s coat pocket, but he imagines that it’s enough for his first time. It wasn’t like either of them would have any sort of gained tolerance. 

Some blackbirds sit perched high above them, resting on the taut black power lines. He and Orla both lean their heads far back on the edge of the bench and watch the different birds come and go. 

“Orla, you really are my best friend.” He doesn’t know what makes him say it, but he knows it’s true, and he’s glad to have expressed that. He doesn’t want her to go about thinking he doesn’t care for her.

“Aye, you’re mine too.” Orla rubs at the tip of her nose with the side of her hand, and then drops it back beside her. “I wish you were nicer to yourself.” Logically, James has known that his friends and family (most of his family) care for him, but sometimes it’s so hard to break through that impenetrable wall of self-hatred he’s garnered over the years, built up by what felt like ages of yearning for his mother’s love and almost never receiving it.

“I’ll try to be.” 

The combination of his conversation with Orla and the drugs coursing through his veins spins things around and presents them back to him looking different from how they did before. The world is lighter than normal, airy and mellow. As their breaths, visible in the cold air, drift up into the atmosphere, the two different plumes intermingle and eventually dissipate completely, riding off on gusts of wind to their next journey.

* * *

James is half asleep when Michelle comes into his room with tea. He wakes up to the sound of the bed creaking (Michelle never knocks, even when his door is actually closed), as she drops onto it, handing him a plate and sitting with her own on her lap. Typically he got called down to the kitchen, and he’d go and sit at the table with his aunt and uncle and cousin and step-dad and hope they didn’t notice how awful he looked in comparison to them. It’s unlike his aunt to let them eat tea in their rooms, but he doesn’t question it, just accepts the dish and shifts himself into a sitting position, side-by-side with Michelle. 

She’s strangely quiet, and he gets the sense that she’s contemplating something. It’s a little frightening to him, seeing her seriously ponder her words before speaking. He was so used to her brazen confidence. 

“You scared the fuck out of me, you know that, dickhead?” she finally says; her voice isn’t as angry as James would’ve thought it’d be. It’s more distressed and frustrated, really. 

“I know. I’m sorry.” His voice is thick, his throat dry from the food and the long hours of sleeping. He takes a sip of the water that’s been sitting on his nightstand, there’s a puddle of condensation underneath it, and when he drinks it it’s lukewarm. 

“Da didn’t write why you’d be taken there on his note. Mammy and I got to the hospital and he told us you’d overdosed and it freaked me the fuck out. I thought you were dead. Why’d you do it?” She’s finished her tea rather quickly, and James is far enough into his own that he decides to stop. His stomach still wasn’t taking to food very well. He takes the plate from her lap and stacks both of them on top of the dish he still has from dinner. 

“I don’t know. I just felt so shitty all the time, and I guess I sort of lost my head.” He’s never been able to put his feelings into words very well. He and his mum never talked about those things before. “I talked to my mum right before, you know? She told me I made her feel like I would’ve been happier if she’d aborted me.” Michelle looks angrier than he thinks he’s ever seen her before, brows furrowed and eyes blazing. 

“What the fuck? I’ll kill her me self.” She bends her leg, her right knee hanging over the edge of the bed, and her foot resting underneath her left leg. “Your mam’s a pure wagon. I hope you realize that. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more selfish piece of shite.” 

“Yeah, I’m starting to see that now.” He even laughs a little as he says it, like it’s some funny joke he’s only just now becoming privy too. He supposes that, in a way, it is. Everyone seemed to realize how shitty his mum treated him before he did. Logically, he’s known it for years, but knowing it and accepting it are completely different things. 

He thinks back to the time his friend back in primary school had fallen and gotten all scraped up while they were at the park. His own mum was at work, and his friends’ mum had come over and wiped down his cut-up knees gently with a sanitary wipe, and then pressed the plasters on and kissed them better. At the time, he’d thought of when one of his teeth had gotten knocked loose while he’d been playing football with his friends. It had been hurting and throbbing, and his mum sat him down in the kitchen, washed her hands, and pulled it without as much as a second thought. It’d had to go, and it really hadn’t even hurt that much, but the sounds and the blood and the feeling of his tooth being taken from his mouth had been jarring and upsetting. The comparison between that and the way his friend’s mum dealt with him sitting on a park bench, with his knees red and angry, but barely bleeding, had made him feel weird. It’s the first time he can remember thinking maybe his mum didn’t like him the way most mums like their sons. 

He and his friend had gone and sat on the swings, and as they kicked back and forth, James had said, “I don’t think my mum likes me very much. Not like your mum likes you.” 

His friend had just replied, “Of course she does. She’s your mum.” Like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“It still hurts sometimes, though,” he tells Michelle. “I know it shouldn’t bother me anymore, but it does.” 

“I get it. I mean, she’s your mam, and it must suck to have your mam be so shite,” Michelle responds. He doesn’t know what he expected—for her to judge him or call him a wuss or something—but the understanding is welcome. “She doesn’t deserve you, though. You don’t deserve to have a mam like her, if you could even call her that.” 

They sit together in silence for a few minutes. The furnace in the corner of his rooms rattles every now and again, old and run-down, but effective enough. He’s become used to the shaking and sputtering, it doesn’t bother him anymore; he almost likes the way it fills the silence of his room on the days and nights where he’s all alone. Sometimes he has a hard time finding company in himself like used to.

He trusts Michelle and the rest of his family more than he’s ever trusted his mother. They’ve become pretty on-par with Paul. Though their relationships are different, they feel safe and loving, in their own ways. He doesn’t long for London like he used to. Sometimes he still thinks about his friends, particularly Chris, and misses them, but it’s not as suffocating as it once was. He almost feels closer to the girls than he did his friends in London. Maybe he’s just growing up, but he likes to think it has something to do with soulmates, people you’re meant to have in your life forever. 

“Hey, Michelle.” Years from now, he still won’t know what made him choose this moment to say it, but he’ll never regret it. “I think I’m bisexual.” He’s been shitting his pants about figuring out his sexuality for ages, thinking he could really only be straight or gay, and not being able to sort out what he’s supposed to make of this strange limbo between the two he found himself in. He’d read the term bisexual in the Derry public library not too long ago, and it felt right, though actually accepting it and sharing it was a feat he hadn’t felt capable of at the time, even if Clare had come out with surprisingly minimal damage or judgement (after the initial fallout with Erin, that is). 

She’s quiet for a moment, looking at him and gauging his words. 

Finally, she answers, “That’s okay. I still love ye.” He and Michelle had never really said they love each other before, and it fills his heart with warmth. He knew, but hearing it out loud is so nice, he has to wipe away the tears welling in his eyes. Michelle knocks her shoulder into his, shoving him playfully. “That makes a hell of a lot more sense than you being completely straight. Like, so much more, you don’t even know.” He laughs and wipes at his nose and lets a few of his tears fall. She doesn’t make any comments. 

That night, he and Michelle go to the living room and make a nest of blankets and pillows like they used to the few times they got to see each other when they were little, drinking tea and eating crips and watching the telly and talking about life. He feels like a kid again, and it’s more refreshing than he could’ve imagined. 

Michelle seems happy to have someone new to talk about lads with, and she goes over who she thinks is hot and who she absolutely is not attracted to (she makes sure to let him know if he dates any of those fellas, she would judge the shit out of him. He isn’t sure whether or not to be offended at first, but when she adds in _you’re bisexual, not desperate—you could do better than any of those feckers_ , he knows the answer is no). Somehow she gets him to admit that he thinks David Donnelly is a massive ride, and she says she’s heard rumors about him also being a wee bisexual, and that maybe they could convince Erin to gracefully step aside. He groans into his pillow, partially to hide his blush and smile. He likes not having to hide this side of him anymore. 

James feels like his walls are finally beginning to unravel, and it’s not as uncomfortable as it would’ve been back in London. He watches them fall, and is proud of himself for not trying to stop them.

* * *

The weekend before James is slated to return to school, he and Michelle go around the Quinns’s house to meet the girls for a sleepover. One of his excuses for avoiding group outings had been that he didn’t want to miss out on time with his step-dad, but Paul had had to leave the night before, and reluctantly did so with a promise to call and write much more consistently than he had before, so he couldn’t really avoid it anymore, no matter how nervous it made him. 

He actually managed to get himself to shower, and his hair is still slightly damp as he and Michelle walk to Erin’s. The air is considerably cold, and it bites at his scalp, gripping the moisture in his hair with an iron fist. At least it gives him something to focus on besides his anxiety. 

His Uncle Martin had gotten another film off of Pyro Pauline, and Michelle stuck him with hanging onto it while they made the journey. The top of the box sticks out of his jacket pocket, and it jostles with each step he takes. At one point, it almost slips out and clatters to the ground, which is slick with melted down snow and patches of ice, but Michelle quickly grabs it, and he moves to keep a steadying hand on it as she ribs him for almost losing their movie.

For all his worries about seeing Erin’s family, they’re very kind to him. They don’t treat him like a basket case, or tell him off for being selfish, or ask any invasive questions about his attempt, and anything they do ask clearly isn’t ill-intentioned. He feels a bit guilty for thinking they might be rude (he had been particularly worried about Joe and Sarah, who could both be quite unfiltered, but even they prove him wrong. Once again, Derry and its people catch him off guard). 

Joe just says it’s good to see him, and Sarah follows it up by adding, “Aye, we were in bits thinkin’ about you in a wee hospital room. Orla told us you were still alive, but it really doesn’t hit you until you see it with your own two eyes, wouldn’t you say, Mary?” 

“Ach, don’t be bothering the wain, Sarah.” 

“I’m not bothering him. I’m simply tellin’ him that it’s good to see he’s still kickin’. I thought you would agree.” Sarah looks incredulous, like Mary’s basically just told him she doesn’t care if he died or not. Maybe it’s a weird thing to laugh about, but it makes him chuckle anyway. The relationship between the two sisters is endlessly fascinating. 

“Of course I agree. I never said I don’t agree.” Mrs. Quinn drops the shirt she was folding into the basket, walks over and hugs him. “I’m glad to see you, James.” She tells him and the girls to go upstairs and have their fun—it’ll be awhile before tea. 

On the way up, Gerry runs into them, and asks to talk to him for a moment. Erin tells him they’ll meet him upstairs, and the girls all run off, their footsteps echoing off the stairs. They go through the _I’m glad you’re okay_ , and _it’s good to see you_ first. 

“I know better than anyone that Derry can be a bit much at times, especially when you weren’t originally from here,” Gerry says. “I’ve always felt a bit of an outsiders’ kinship with you, you know, James? Like, we’ve both found home in a place we never expected.” 

He’s embarrassed to admit to himself that his eyes fill up with tears as he and Gerry part ways and he starts up the stairs. It was such a perfect way of looking at it. He was an outsider in some ways, and always would be, but that didn’t prevent him from making Derry a place where he could feel comfortable, where he had friends and family to love and spend time with. When he and Kathy had come to town in the summer, the air had been hot and stifling, and he was certain it’d only be a few months before he was back in London. Now, in the crisp, biting frost of an Ireland winter, he can’t imagine leaving. Not yet, anyway. London will always hold a special spot in his heart, and will always be home in its own rite, but he’s found a second home, a stronger home, in Derry and the girls and his aunt, uncle and cousins.

Like all little kids do, he used to think the sun rose and fell with his mum, like everything she did was smart and good, because not only was she an adult, but she was his _mum_ , and mothers were always right. Even as he grew older and she began to lose more and more interest in him, he had let himself be pulled into the illusion that he was truly loved and cared for. He’s finally finding it in him to step back and stop being blinded by the love he has for her. He’ll never stop loving her, but he can’t say he misses her anymore. 

In Erin’s room, he joins the girls in their pile on her bed, a tangle of arms and legs and laughter. He even comes out to them too, and the world doesn’t come screeching to a halt. They keep going on, talking and giggling, and he finally feels okay. Things aren’t great, and they probably won’t be for a while, but it’s a start. They’ll get better. For once, he’s certain of it.

Slowly but surely, his world starts to rebuild itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this story :)) I think it turned out pretty well! I can at least be pretty proud of it lol. Thank you for reading, and thank you for everyone who's taken the time to comment. I really, really appreciate it. 
> 
> Hope you all have a lovely day!!


End file.
